Drop Dead Cold

by Karin Kaufman

  “Will you not answer that? It will put you at ease.”

  I picked up the knife.

  “There’s no need for that.”

  “Like you said, I’m cautious.” I rushed past him, strode for the front door, and flung it open.

  “Kate, it’s only me,” Emily said with a laugh, running her fingers through her copper-colored hair. “Are you carving a turkey? I thought you were on a bird tour.”

  I put a finger to my lips. “Would you wait in the living room? There’s someone here—his name is Richard Comeau—but he’ll be leaving soon.”

  “Um, okay.”

  I shut the door and grabbed hold of her arm, leaning close. “If he asks you anything, pretend you know nothing,” I said under my breath.

  When I returned to the kitchen, Comeau was at my hutch. I swallowed back the panic rising in my throat. Minette’s favorite teacup, the place where she preferred to sleep at night, was on the top shelf, and it was lined with cotton balls. “Do you mind? Honestly.”

  “But of course, pardonnez-moi.” He returned to his seat at the table. “Who was at the door?”

  “A friend who’s now in the living room.” Still holding the knife, I sat across from him. “Tell me exactly why you’re here. Or leave. Either one.”

  He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the living room. “If we’re private.”

  “We’re private enough.”

  “Have you been to the woods across Birch Street?” he asked in a low voice.

  I refused to likewise lower my voice. “My husband and I used to forage for berries there. Everyone on Birch Street has walked in those woods. We all love it there.”

  “Ray Landry used to take his walks there.”

  “Ray was murdered last October.”

  “Yes, I know, and I’m sorry.”

  “How do you know about Ray? You said you’re from Lewiston.”

  “It was in the papers there. Murders often are.”

  “I’m rapidly losing patience. Why are you here? Or better yet, don’t tell me why you’re here, tell me who you work for.”

  “I don’t work for anyone. What a question! I’m a solo practitioner. There are . . . things in the woods. Not every wooded area in Maine has them. Smithwell is an exceptional center of activity.”

  I figured I’d play it dumb. “Do you mean berries? Moss? Are you telling me not to forage? Are you with a state agency? Go ahead and report me, because I happen to know what I do is legal.”

  Comeau folded his hands on the table and became quite still. “You’re not being helpful.”

  Exasperated, I exhaled loudly and flopped back in my chair. “Helpful? Has it occurred to you that I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re babbling about?”

  A new expression crossed his face. He seemed to be mulling over my words, false though they were, and considering that they might be true. “Did you talk to Mr. Landry about the woods?”

  “He taught me what grows there—wild leeks and fiddleheads. He showed me which berries were safe to eat and which were dangerous.” I rose. “Unless you can get to your point right now, I have things to do. I’m not in the mood for this after watching Nadine Sullivan die.”

  “She looked ill to me. From the start of the tour, I mean. But about Mr. Landry. I thought something different, and perhaps I’m wrong. Mr. Dearborn . . .” Comeau studied his fingernails and then glanced across the kitchen table to the finger-sized clump of moss I’d left there. “Moss?”

  “I thought you and Dearborn just met. Is Detective Rancourt aware than you know each other?”

  “Did you find this moss at Millford? Such a small, tasty knot of it.”

  I didn’t miss a beat. “If you put it in a blender and add milk or yogurt, blend it, then paint the mixture on a pot or brick, you can grow new moss on the surface. It’s charmant.”

  “There’s no moss closer to home?”

  “I liked the look of this moss. It’s different from what I find in the woods.” I was talking far too much. Explaining too much. Rabbiting on and on as if I had a guilty conscience. A normal person with nothing to hide would have told Comeau to get out minutes ago. “My foraging habits are none of your business. Have you finished?”

  “I thought you and Ray Landry were friends, Mrs. Brewer. That’s what I heard from Mr. Dearborn on the bus.”

  “We were friends. Ray had a lot of friends.” I left him behind the kitchen and stood waiting for him at my open front door. Allowing the man inside my home had been a stupid move. Comeau had told me nothing, yet he’d accomplished several things: he’d seen the inside of my house, he’d found out I’d foraged in the woods with Ray, and he’d seen the moss. But did that moss mean to him what it meant to me? It couldn’t, could it? Oh, I was getting paranoid.

  Comeau sauntered toward my door in that slow-moving, imperial way of his that I now found annoying beyond words. “I’m sorry I have to take my leave so soon, Mrs. Brewer. May I call you Kate?”

  “You could have stayed longer if you’d been honest with me.” I extended my hand toward his car on the drive, making it clear he was to keep on walking.

  He stepped just over the threshold before he about-faced. “I believe you and Mr. Landry spoke more than you let on.”

  “I speak to all my neighbors. Believe what you want. Talk to me when you’ve decided to make sense. Until then, I’ll let Rancourt you called on me.” I pushed hard on the door and it slammed in Comeau’s face.

  “Whoa,” Emily said.

  I spun back. My friend was now standing where the living room met the foyer, a shock but bemused expression on her face.

  “Who’s that guy? And who’s this Nadine Sullivan you watched die?”

  “A woman on the tour. Minette?” I marched into the living room and shouted up the fireplace flue. “Minette, this is important.”

  “Kate, I’m coming, I’m coming. I have dirty feet.” She drifted downward until she hovered a foot above the embers of last night’s fire. Her pink wings fluttering to keep her airborne, she stuck out her feet and showed me the soot on her soles. “I put my feet down.”

  “Never mind,” I said. “Listen to me very carefully.”

  “Listening.” Minette flapped her wings forward, shot horizontally into the living room, and landed feet first on top of one of two armchairs by the fire.

  “Think hard, Minette. Have you ever heard that man’s voice before?”

  “No, never.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I would remember. But I know he has a bad voice.”

  “He’s a bad man?”

  “He’s bad and dangerous, Kate.”

  I nodded in agreement. Fairies not only possessed superhuman hearing, as I’d learned from Minette, but they were capable of making spot-on character judgments based on a human being’s tone of voice. I figured that was nature’s way of compensating them for their vulnerable size. “If you ever hear his voice again, you must hide immediately. Don’t take a peek, hide.”

  Minette gazed up at me with her luminous green eyes. “Is he very bad? I think he’s very bad, Kate.”

  CHAPTER 6

  I fixed cheese and ham sandwiches for me and Emily, and while we ate at the kitchen table, I went over the day’s events, from the Dearborns’ creepy comments about Ray to Comeau’s general weirdness and Nadine’s strange death. “She found a note on her bus seat shortly before she died,” I said. “It read, ‘You will drop dead before you leave this bus.’ And she did, Emily. She dropped to the floor of the bus, and I think it had something to do with the powder on her fingers. It was murder, and the killer wanted her to know she was about to die.”

  “Has Rancourt called her death a homicide?”

  “It’s only a matter of time. Bouchard said Rancourt would stop by my house later today to talk to me. I’ll ask him then.”

  Minette, who was standing on my right shoulder, wiggling excitedly as she stared down at the moss, now dropped to the table.

 
“Eat at least some of that moss now,” I told her. “No use waiting until it dries up. I’ll refrigerate the rest.”

  “It’s stupendous, Kate.” She sat cross-legged and tore a bit of moss half the size of her hand from the clump.

  Minette still fascinated me, and I loved to watch her. She didn’t eat as often as I did, but when she did, she could put away a remarkable amount of moss, berries, roots, and wild radishes, not to mention buttered toast with jam or maple syrup. Once I’d jokingly told her she had a hollow leg, but the idiom had escaped her—worried her, in fact—so I’d never said it again.

  She was a stunning little creature. Her wavy, light brown hair glistened in the light, her wings were pink on the outside, fading to ivory the closer they came to her body, and though she had a high-pitched voice, it wasn’t squeaky or grating. It was soft and smooth, like silk or cream. Although her skin felt and looked like human flesh, it was slightly paler and pinker—but not as pink as her clothes when I’d first discovered her. Last month I’d finally sewn her a pair of warm pants from one of my blue socks. They weren’t stylish, but they were keeping her warm in what was turning out to be a brutal late winter.

  Minette was happy to wear the pants, but she refused to let me make her shoes. Now as always, she was barefoot. She told me fairies never wore shoes. It was unthinkable, vulgar.

  “I picked that moss in the Millford Preserve,” I told Emily. “Comeau saw it on the table and gave it the evil eye.”

  “He couldn’t know you picked it for a fairy.”

  “I hope you’re right, but I’m afraid you’re not. Would you ask Laurence if he’s ever heard of a Richard Comeau from Lewiston? If anyone knows who Comeau really is, it’s your husband. Is he home or is he globetrotting again?”

  “He’s off to Tunisia next week.”

  “Good heavens.”

  Laurence MacKenzie, who was in the “construction business”—that was as specific as he got about his work—often traveled to faraway places. Lately he’d also talked a lot about quitting his job. He was tired of the long plane flights and the even longer time away from home. Like me, he was fifty, and Emily, at forty-eight, was tired of spending half the year alone. Her children grown and flown, she was increasingly weary of her empty nest.

  In his mysterious former life, before the construction business, Laurence had also traveled, but then it had been to various world embassies. The official line was he’d been engaged in “government work,” whatever that was. He’d never been an ambassador and he’d never been assigned in any official capacity to an embassy, so what he’d actually done in those days was a mystery, even to Emily. Laurence had never discussed the details of his work, especially after one of his tiring overseas journeys. He had complained to her about the paperwork involved, but that’s all. Emily hadn’t minded. What work details he had told her about she’d found boring if not incomprehensible.

  Emily often said Laurence’s work had involved planting new embassies, but I liked to think he’d been a spy. And maybe still was. That made infinitely more sense to me. One thing I knew for certain: closed doors opened at the sound of the name Laurence MacKenzie.

  “You have two little feet-shaped black smudges on your sweater,” Emily said, pointing at my shoulder.

  I angled my head for a look.

  “Sorry, Kate,” Minette said. Again she held up her soles for my examination. “I’ll never stand on the shelf in the fireplace again. Ray of the Forest called it the smoke shelf.”

  “Smoke shelf,” Emily said. “I’ve never heard that before. You learn something new every day in this house.”

  “If Laurence is in construction, wouldn’t he know what a smoke shelf is?” I asked with a grin.

  Emily ignored my question. “So basically, your bird tour was loaded with weirdos and a cold-blooded killer.”

  “I can’t argue with that.” I took our plates to the sink and checked my watch. “After all that happened on the bus, the Dearborns invited me to their house for drinks tonight. Seven o’clock. Gavin said he knew I was at 2000 Birch because of Ray. He said his writings live on, whatever that means.”

  “Did they find something Ray wrote?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  When I returned to my chair, Minette let go of the moss and said, “Kate, I must go with you. Those people might be very bad, like the Comeau man. You need me.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’m good at hiding.” She scooted forward and laid her pea-sized hand on my thumb. “And I want to see Ray of the Forest’s house again.”

  “I’m sorry, Minette. It’s way too dangerous. I think the Dearborns read something Ray wrote about fairies. That doesn’t mean they believe in fairies, but let’s not give them a reason to.”

  “But I—”

  “We’ll find another way at another time to let you see Ray’s house, but not tonight. And don’t hide in my coat pocket when I go out. I can’t protect you in their house, do you understand? Now that Comeau knows where I live, I’m concerned enough about protecting you in this house.”

  “Want my advice?” Emily said. “Don’t invite birdwatching creeps into your home. Why did you let that jerk in?”

  “He hunted me down, Emily, and I wanted to know why. And when I find out why, I’m going to tell Rancourt. Comeau knew where I lived before Gavin Dearborn said my street address aloud on the bus, you can bet on it.”

  “Hang on a sec. Let me talk to Laurence.” Emily grabbed my cordless phone from the counter near the refrigerator and dialed.

  “I thought Laurence was out or I would’ve asked him over when Comeau showed up,” I said. “Comeau would’ve taken one look at him and never darkened my door again.”

  Emily put her hand over the phone and looked at me. “But I know what Comeau looks like now, and that’s a handy thing.”

  “True.”

  “Laurence? Kate and I need some information. Do you know a man named Richard Comeau from Lewiston? He’s in his fifties, tall but kind of scrawny looking, grayish hair? Have you ever run into anyone like that?”

  Emily listened, and as she did, she looked my way and shook her head. “Okay, we’ll try to do that. I’m sure he’s still hanging around Smithwell. He was on Kate’s bird tour bus. Yes, we’ll be careful.” She hung up. “I failed to mention the dead body on your bus.”

  “I noticed.”

  “We don’t know yet if it’s murder.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Where’s Rancourt? You said he was coming over.”

  “Bouchard didn’t mention a specific time.” I got to my feet, suddenly full of energy and not willing to wait around for Rancourt to show up. I wanted to know what had happened to Nadine—surely the police knew by now what that powder on her hands was—and I wanted to find out who this Comeau character was. “Do you think Comeau has a record? It’s possible, isn’t it? If I tell Rancourt that he’s harassing me, he’ll look into it.”

  “Are you going to the station?”

  I snagged my coat from the kitchen chair. “Coming with me?”

  “You know I love a mystery.”

  “Kate, Kate.”

  I looked down at Minette.

  “My dirty feet first,” she implored. “Then I must come with you to the police.”

  “I guess you can.” I dropped my coat. “Seeing as you’ve agreed to not visit the Dearborns with me tonight. Since I have your word on that.”

  Smiling sweetly and, I thought, somewhat mischievously, she nodded her head and flew off, drifting down to one side of my kitchen’s double sink. I tested the water temperature in the faucet, squirted a bit of soap near her feet, and then ran the water in a slow stream while Minette scrubbed the soot away.

  Emily propped her elbows on the counter, fascinated by the goings-on. “It’s a fairy bath. I’ve wondered what you do. Do you bathe in ponds or streams in the woods?”

  Minette giggled. “Yes, Emily. Fairies are not dirty. We’re clean
and bright.”

  I turned off the water and set a folded paper towel on the counter. With two flaps of her wings, Minette landed on the towel and then crouched down and dried her feet. “No more foot prints,” she said, “and no more smoke shelf.”

  Minette got into my right coat pocket as Emily and I headed out the side door. I’d grown used to carrying her about on my right side. It was a habit for me now, which meant I was less likely to bump into someone or something when she was with me. The thought of that horrified me, but Minette seemed unconcerned. She trusted me utterly. When we were safely in my garage, hidden from neighbors’ eyes, Minette climbed out of my pocket. In one swift and continuous motion, she went horizontal, pressed her feet to my coat, and shot forward—like a swimmer pushing off a wall—and propelled herself toward the back seat.

  The Jeep slid a little on some old ice as I backed down the drive, but when we reached the turnaround my husband, Michael, had created years ago, I was at least able to point the vehicle toward the street. Sliding forward was less disconcerting that sliding backward.

  “This turnaround was one of the smartest things Michael ever did,” Emily said. “Along with marrying you, of course. I’ve been trying to get Laurence to build something like this for ages. We could use the extra parking room it creates.”

  “It allows you to pass on the driveway, too.” Emily had taken to mentioning Michael more—and doing so without apologizing for it, as she had in the past. Last December had marked the one-year anniversary of his death from cancer, and I supposed that yardstick had emboldened her. I’d discovered that most people thought one year was the limit for the worst sort of grief. How wrong they were. Sure, I was sleeping a little better at night, and I wasn’t jumping at unexpected sounds nearly as much as I had in the first eight or ten months after his death, but grief still gripped me. The love of my life had left this earth forever. Grief was a part of me now, like a second skin.

  I made a right onto the Bog Road, and as I approached the old train trestle I drove under on my regular route to downtown, I saw a cluster of police cars and a fire truck blocking one lane. I slowed to a crawl and instructed Minette to return to my pocket. “That’s Bouchard directing traffic.”